Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Giddens, Bourdieu, and the Future

The work of these two theorists is useful in that they give us a line of thought that is not positivist in claiming that structure causes behavior nor is it strictly subjective and unable to produce generalized knowledge. This flexibility is both intellectually satisfying and manageable. One problem that arises however is that these two pieces of work are more model and situated interpretable paradigm than a theory that can be used to project. While the simultaneous creation and recreation of Giddens is interesting in explaining how societies perpetuate and change, but it is lacking in the manner of Weber’s iron cage or Marx’s revolution. Similarly Bourdieu’s field, habitus, and capitals can be useful for examining classes, groups, and positions but to looking into the future, it has less utility.

Do the work of these theorists possess utility when speculating into the future?

4 comments:

I think it varies. Society in general may change trends and fads but societal values or norms take much longer to evolve. For example, I think social class "rules" have not greatly changed. The video we watch in class described norms of the upper class which I think have stayed the same for a very long time because parent's teach their children and the cycle continues. On the other hand, in the very far future these theorists works may not be able to help because our society may have changed so much. For example, if we every get to the point where we are living in a society like in the movie Wall-E I think that understanding field, habitus and capitals will be irrelevant because we will be virtual clones of our place in society.

I am conflicted by Bordieu because not just because someone is of the lower class does it mean that they will like a specific type of food. For example, I am not middle class yet I don't like white bread. I like the expensive kind. So I just don't think that the theory is that useful. Giddens on the other hand is more useful because he talks about disembedding which will still be useful in the future.

I think that if we look at EVERY individual, we will not find that Bordieu's theory applies to everyone. Still, generally speaking, he has a point. People will probably not like food that they haven't been exposed to since their early years. For example, how many people that grew up wealthy (with parents that grew up wealthy too) do you think would enjoy Chicos Tacos? Compare that to people who grew up poor/working/lower middle class or whose parents grew up in those classes. Similarly, how many people in the lower SES enjoy caviar?

I would have to agree with "Salty" in the way that he talks about Giddens and Bourdieu because even when their theories would not help us analyse future situations, they help us analise present situations. When I talk about present situations I mean groups, classes and positions that can be analised through Bourdieu's field, habitus and capitals. I think that Bourdieu's habitus, field, and capitals work for everyone, even when they can be changed through education, the social environment in which we live or simply change through time.